Category: Uncategorized
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VE Day – a poem by Maureen Sutton
I didn’t want to write a post today, as I had already posted one earlier in the week. But then, by chance Maureen Sutton sent me a poem that made me think and which she has allowed me to publish here. I have come to know about Maureen’s poetry through my earlier post on pandemic…
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Engineering biology? Sure! But which kind?
This is a guest post by Massimiliano Simons who is a postdoctoral researcher at the department of philosophy and moral sciences at Ghent University, Belgium. *** Biology is a mess, not only the natural processes out there but also the science in the lab. Every biological rule seems to have exceptions and all biological laboratories…
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Moral Dilemmas in Science Journalism about Genetics Research: The case of gene drives
Guest post by Rebecca Hardesty, Ph.D. Rebecca Hardesty is a postdoctoral scholar in science education and communication at UC San Diego in its Division of Biological Sciences and the Teaching + Learning Commons. *** The New York Times Magazine rang in the New Year with a featured piece by Jennifer Kahn recounting the promises and…
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Bushfires and climate change communication: Between amplification and attenuation
For about a decade I have been thinking and writing about extreme weather events and their links to human-induced climate change, and this included quite a few references to Australia, especially droughts, heatwaves and bushfires. I thought the Las Conchas Fire in New Mexico, lived through by some of my family, was bad. I thought…
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Spread the message, not the germs: A retrospective on a collaborative project
More or less exactly a decade ago, I was working on various science and society issues, including nanotechnology, antimicrobial resistance and infection control. This brought me into contact with a variety of people at the University of Nottingham, including Kim Hardie, a molecular microbiologist, Joel Segal, a specialist in manufacturing engineering, Jacqueline Randle, then working…
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Making Science Public 2019: An overview
Every year I think: This will be the last year I write something for this blog… and each year I write a bit more. And so it was this year. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I really don’t know. But it distracts me from life’s increasing troubles and keeps me sane.…
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The Power of Plasticity: Epigenetics in Science Fiction
This is another guest post by Cath Ennis in our series of posts on epigenetics and popular culture. *** One of the fascinating things about epigenetics is how quickly some of the public perceptions of the field have raced far beyond the actual state of the science. I’ve seen and heard countless online and real…
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Communicating gene drive: The dangers of misleading headlines
As some of you know, I am interested in how people communicate about ‘gene drive’, a new biotechnology that can potentially be used to eradicate disease transmitting animals. Wiping out the daughters Some days ago, I saw a tweet that mentioned an article published in The Guardian entitled “Wiping out the daughters: Burkina Faso’s controversial…
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Astrogenomics: Integration and inspiration
I should have blogged about embryo editing in Russia. I should have blogged about Netflix’s ‘Unnatural selection’ series on CRISPR and genome editing. I should have blogged about prime editing, but life is getting in the way at the moment. That doesn’t mean I don’t look at twitter once in a while (au contraire!). So,…
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A road called ‘gene drive’ and the road to ‘gene drive’: Trials and tribulations of media analysis
As people might know, I enjoy doing media analysis of emerging biotechnologies, from cloning to gene editing and beyond. I have lately become fascinated with something called ‘gene drive’, a new genetic engineering technology that was brought to public attention around 2014/2015 at the confluence of two ‘events’: the outbreak of Zika and advances in CRISPR-Cas9…
Making Science Public 